Turn it up.If you're at work, invite everyone around you to watch the video. Except, don't invite Sarah,
just to, you know, let her know that she's not invited. Just because.
Cue any NFL theme song…
Sometimes driving are a crap shoot meaning, crap wants to
get into your car and you have to shoot it. I’ve had people think they were
going to get a ride with me – after all, they did request it and I arrived –
only to hear me say, “Oh good! Uber is paying me $150 to drop off at detox!” Then
I shoot them.
Actually, Uber doesn’t allow drivers to carry guns,
something about not wanting riders to able to start a running gun battle while
dropping at the airport. Instead, I carry a hammer and wave it around while
screaming about my rights and freedoms.
The name that appeared on the call was “NPC Competitor
Steven” (really, I’m not shitting you) and I wondered what NPC was and why it
had contests. Given that I was picking up in the pit of Scottsdale’s club Hell,
I hoped NPC didn’t mean Never Purchase Crabs because they’re usually free with
a night of screaming in someone’s ear and blowing money on drinks.
When I Googled NPC just now, I learned that it’s the
National Physique Committee, a group of marginally serious people who judge the
bulges on men. To be fair, women are also featured but if people are judging
girl bulges that gets into a whole different level of fetish.
In fact, there’s some
guy running his own competition (which makes me wonder how legit this whole
NPC thing is), the pics on his site of male body builders doing their “You call
this an arm, I call it my dick” pose. That and lots of photos of the kinds of
girls who are, like, totally into guys with arm dicks. It looked as though
Jersey Shore had been hit by a nuclear hormone explosion, the Pauly D aftermath
being mutations of hideous proportions.
There’s a clan of cop cars when I pull up, lights flashing,
a Sheriff’s black SUV, everyone flashing their lights and doing cop things; I
should have brought donuts. I pull behind an empty unit and send a text to
announce, “It’s time to go, children.” I wait, roll a cigarette, turn up the Buzzcocks. Cops are shouting but not at me, so there's that. I’m watching the
timer on my phone, thinking of shaving 45 seconds off the wait time.
My thumb was ready to tap “Rider no show” in order to send
me rolling when NPC Competitor Steven texted me back:
My first indication that Uber had instituted a rolling liquor store policy.
I texted back, “LOL, that’ll be extra,” and watched as the
seconds neared GTG, hoping to send KTHXBAI. Suddenly, appearing at the car, a
couple of roided-out meatheads with biceps the size of pitbulls escorting three
stiletto-shod porn bots. It was as if the skies of Scottsdale shat latex, body
enhancements, breast implants and dance stank onto the sidewalk. I roll down
the window so NPC Competitor Steve won’t break it with his huge,
hormone-enhanced head.
“I can only take four unless you want to stuff one of the
girls back there. I don’t think either of you guys will fit back there.” Before
I could say that there was already a body in my trunk and I didn’t want to dump
it in front of the cops, they began climbing into my car.
“We can do it,” NPC Competitor Steve said as he got in the
front, “The guy who brought us here did it.”
“Then that guy’s car must have had a seat extension, an
option that didn’t come with this car. I’m not carrying an unbelted passenger through
the middle of a cop parade.”
“I’ll tip you. Twenty bucks, we’re not going far.”
The cops seem to be seriously occupied with whatever went
down with late-night pizza so I considered the Jackson. I could say I was delivering
collagen and two sides of beef if I got pulled over. Calculating the best exit,
I held out my hand and said, “Pay me now.”
“I just did, on the app.”
“No. You didn’t. You tipped someone else for something if
you did anything but you didn’t tip me. The Uber app doesn’t take tips.”
“Bullshit! The Uber app does
take tips, they just started it. They
did it to keep drivers from taking cash from customers and then also charging
their cards!”
It became immediately apparent that steroids had eaten this
guy’s brain, leaving just a kernel that allowed him to remember his own name
and jump around excitedly when someone offered to take him for a walk. Not
satisfied with the outrageous stupidity of the lie he’d just told, NPC Competitor
Steve continued to tap the final nail on the Scottsdale clubhead stereotype
coffin:
“I should know, Uber sponsors me and they keep me up to date
on everything they do. They give me stocks in the company. They just started
this in a few cities to see how this works.”
“Oh. Uber sponsors whatever you do because they feel they
don’t look ridiculous enough to UFC fans. And Oh, their defining policy of
discouraging tips, the one that is screamed loudly on their website and app
form, was reversed in an act of corporate whimsy and done some time after I
started driving tonight. Get the fuck out of my car.”
NPC Competitor Steve looked as though he wanted to paint the
upholstery with me, he was not used to people talking back to him. He was
probably confused by the other mouth that had words in it and could think only
to crush my little car with me in it then bounce the ball of metal and bloody flesh
down the street.
“Really?” whined Bambi or Muffin or Nipples, as the tanned
heap untangled from the backseat and oozed onto the sidewalk. The Roid Boyz
also got out, defeated, their Uber sponsorship an impossible dream at this
point. NPC Competitor Steve’s eyes clenched up like two commas that marked an
eternal pause.
I blazed out of there, cancelling the call and hoping I’d
never have to go back. A few minutes out, my app dinged, the location about a
block from where I’d been. There’s a rule that the distance from best lane you
need to turn to take a call is determined by the amount of shit you have left
to give. Having just witnessed the horrors of modern body enhancement science,
I was curious to see if the freak show still offered specimens of genetic atrocity
to cart around.
The rider called as soon as his app dinged. asking where I
was. He’d chosen the unfortunate location of a parking lot to meet me at,
thinking that among the dozens of cars there, mine would be the one with the
glittering Uber icon hovering above it. Judging by the number of phones to
faces and traffic all around, it was obvious that a game of Where’s Waldo is
quite popular in Scottsdale at 3 am.
“My lights are on. A cop just passed behind me and is now
turning into the parking lot.”
After waving them in, I saw that I’d be driving two bangers
to Tempe. The riders friend got in and then asked if I’d move my seat up.
“I’m a giant man and I need room to drive us safely. Sorry. You can sit up front if
you’d like.”
The rider told his friend to chill, implying it was best to
just ignore the old white guy and get home. The two of them barely spoke as I
sped south, Jimmy McGriff jamming out organ blues and Muddy Waters wailingabout his mojo working but just not on you.
The energy shifted immediately as Birdman (feat. Lil Wayne) “Neckof the Woods” came on.
“You like this?”
“It’s on my iPod.” I looked back with a nod, assuring him that
it wasn’t on there by mistake.
The pair’s attitude towards me flipped like the U-turn I’d
taken to pick them up. Suddenly, I was kind of dope for an old guy.
The song ended and I passed over Chris Isaak and John
Mellencamp, landing on The Five Heartbeats, “A Heart is a House for Love.”
“You’re not from here, are you?” the friend asked.
“Colorado. What makes you say that?”
“The music you listen to. You’re not like people in Arizona.”
“I just can’t listen to one thing all night when I’m
driving, you know?”
“It gets boring.”
“Without my music, I couldn’t do this job.”
I dropped the rider just as the song was ending. We did the
bro shake as he indicated that I was all right, after all, “You like Bloodhound
Gang,” he said, not asking me if I was into the band but making a comparison, that
I was like those dudes.
Sometimes, I’m surprised by my passengers as well, the business
executive who asks if it’s The Shins on my pod (it was Deer Tick) or the CEO
chick who corrected me, that the Beastie Boys recorded “Ill Communication” after
“Paul’s Boutique” (I was confused with “License to Ill”), the sweet granny who
was tickled by The Cramps, “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”
Yes, I need my music to through a night of driving, if only
to bring me moments like that, the ones that redeem an attempt by DuPont
products to commandeer my car with arm dicks.
